PASTA SALAD

i made pasta salad today!
its not what i would normally make, cause if you know me, i don't advocate using mayo or salad cream. the salad i normally make for my own consumption would be like clear Italian vinaigrette dressing with apple cider plus honey mustard. oh, plus lotsa FRESH crushed black pepper. there is a difference between the freshly crushed one and the ones which are pre-crushed. the former bears a lot more taste and aroma.

so as you can see, salad as the name suggest, is just barely tossing every ingredient together. isn't very difficult, but the tedious part is preparing all the ingredients and washing up. washing is sucha bitch. never fails to wrinkle my hand and cause my nails to become more brittle.

anw, i cheated a little, hehe. i bought the ready roasted chicken from the supermarket, makes it so much easier! and this is self-recipe, sauces and ingredients are what i wanna put into the dish. did try to make it a little healthier by substituting certain stuffs. then again, its for a party later on and i bet the people there are more into the taste of the salad then wanting to diet. so, hack care.

the ingredients(amount as you wish):

1. 1 whole roasted chicken
2. green&red peppers
3. fine baby beans
4. spring onions
5. red skin potatoes
6. back bacon
7. farfarlle (bow-shaped pasta)

and as for the dressing, i can never follow the ones given to me in recipes(xml/xg). cause some of us like the dressing a little more, some of us like it just nice coated and not drenched. so in my opinion, just based on your instinct. taste as you add, i think that's the best gauge alr.

dressing:

1. salad cream (heinz)
2. plain yogurt
   
3. Dijon mustard
4. Worcestershire sauce
5. fresh crushed black pepper
6. juice from 1 lemon
   

and here we go,

totally hate carrying heavy stuffs home from the supermarket.

since i want the skin on the potato, needa scrub it clean *sparkles*

boil the potatoes. they should be red potatoes but they don't look red. such potatoes are good for tossing salad. they're a tad harder and will not go mushy like the ones meant for mashed potatoes.

wash and cut the beans. end up using one pkt only.

the peppers!


something i've learnt from mum: veges for salad, just needa be scald, not cooked. and which after when taken out from the boiling water, gotta be put into cold/ice water. didn't had ice in the moment of time so i used water from the fridge. this is to stop the vege from continuous cooking after being taken out from the pot due to the heat, thus the vege will still remain green! not overcooked and sometimes will turn yellow too.

frying the bacon, scary that it'll ooze out oil on its own. like what i said, since im not making this salad for any health purpose.... so.. whatever! haha!

boiling the pasta. the art of it is in getting the correct timing, to ensure that the pasta doesn't overcook and become mushy, or under cook which is then still hard and the dough-y taste is still there. we need the pasta ale dente!

the spring onions

meat from 1 roasted chicken after i de-boned it. kept the skin in there for flavour too.

start chopping up the potatoes and gonna start the mixing-it-all-up process! inevitably got messy around the kitchen at this point in time, so i forgot all about the pics. plus my hands were starting to get dirty.

so,after adding all the sauces and tossing all the ingredients tgt, presenting to you the end product
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TADAH!!!

was asking mum what should i make to a potluck for tonight, and she suggested something that i've done before, since it would be safe and that i know it'll be nice for the guests present. haha, it's my first time making this pasta salad. i decided that i wanna make this and it has been stucked in my mind, well, obviously didn't bother about what mum said. just praying for good comments later!! HAHA!